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South Africa
South Africa, officially the Popular Democratic Republic of South Africa, is a socialist state located in the eastern half of the southern tip of the continent of Africa and the successor state to the Republic of South Africa. History 2020s An investigation into corruption within the government and the ranks of the ruling African National Congress in 2026 by the newly re-established Directorate of Special Operations (DSO, colloquially known as the "Scorpions") resulted in the prosecution of several senior ministers, including Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni and Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel. The purge of Zuma-era bureaucrats prevented the passing of legislation that would allow the government to expropriate land without compensation and therefore enable the land reforms promised by Ramaphosa in 2018 and that ensured his landslide victory in the 2024 General Election, and what appeared at the time to be the demise of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). The ANC's land redistribution policy also led to the rise of several Afrikaner nationalist groups, most notably the Suidlanders, throughout the late 2020s and the establishment of white-only settlements in Northern Cape to be guarded by armed militias in the eventuality that violence escalated - not an unplausible prediction, considering that farm murders were now at rates unseen since their all-time high in 2001. This paired with the reemergence of the EFF as a far more aggressive force due to frustration at the inaction of the ANC to rebalance the ownership of land away from the Afrikaners, now only 5% of the population, and towards the black Africans led to instability in South Africa greater than that at the end of the Apartheid system and the transition to majority rule in the 1990s. The Democratic Alliance formed a coalition with the resurgent IFP after a narrow victory in the 2029 election. 2030s The general trend of descent into political extremism and social fragmentation of the late 2020s continued into the 2030s, eventually culminating in the EFF victory in the 2034 General Election. The ANC and the moderate Afrikaner Freedom Front won few seats, with President Julius Malema's party winning almost everywhere, the only notable exceptions being KwaZulu-Natal, an IFP stronghold, and Cape Town, where the Democratic Alliance held on to its majority. Under the auspices of legalising exproproation without compensation, the constitution was scrapped in 2035 and a new one which written and hastily passed by the huge EFF majority in Parliament. The police and the EFF's own paramilitary were merged and the party made inseparable from government, with Parliament becoming solely a rubber stamp, approving any and all legislation reccomended by the President. The Republic of South Africa was disestablished and the Popular Democratic Republic of South Africa formed. Land redistribution was carried out through 2036 to 2038, and was widely criticised for its violent nature, resulting in the international condemnation of South Africa. With moderates within the white population (primarily of British rather than Dutch extraction and former supporters of the Democratic Alliance) fleeing the country, the hardline Afrikaner nationalists - who remained in South Africa in order to resist Malema's tyrrany and support in the evacuation of whites from major population centres and towards the rural Northern Cape where an independent "Afrikaner People's State" had been declared - turned towards Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups such as the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), Afrikaner People's Front (AV) and the Reconstituted National Party (HNP), all of which were forced into an uneasy alliance. This led to the demise of the more moderate Suidlanders, another group which advocated an independent Afrikaner state but in cooperation with the international community and preferably through negotiation with the EFF prior to seccession from the Popular Democratic Republic. This shift contributed to the increased perception of whites as the enemy to black Africans, and a boost in popularity for the EFF despite the now floundering economy. 2040s By the mid to late 2040s, South Africa was on the verge of total collapse. Production was down 400% from 2036 (the year in which land redistribution began), with new black farmers not putting their land to use due to a lack of equipment or capital to purchase said equipment. The movement of people into urban areas increased rapidly, and the cities soon began to creak under the weight of overpopulation, with accommodation, water and food becoming scarce despite the construction of social housing and the rationing of what little produce was made. Infrastructure had begun to decay, preventing produce being moved to possible markets, and therefore forcing those who remained in the countryside to resort to subsistence farming. By 2040, South Africa was in the grasp of the worst famine in its history. Refugees spilt over into Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana (white militias prevented access to Northern Cape and therefore to Namibia). The EFF had lost much of its support, which was now constrained almost solely to Limpopo, Gauteng and North West Province, the areas in which much of the party's leadership originated and which, therefore, had been prioritised and had recieved the lion's share of the scarce resources South Africa had. Since the early 2030s, a low intensity guerilla war had been fought between the Afrikaner nationalists, who were in full control of their territory and had governed it with some degree of efficiency, but heavily relying on illegal trade through Namibia. The conflict was brought to an end by a ceasefire in 2038 in which the the EFF government in Cape Town would respect the boundaries of the Volkstaat but stop short of recognising its independence. Both the AV (having merged with the AWB shortly after the foundation of the state) and EFF agreed to the deal, with only the HNP refusing to recognise it, remaining in pursuit of a one-state solution and morphing into a terrorist group. A series of bombings carried out by the HNP, the new and far more violent successor to the HNP, in the early 2040s led President Malema to alledge in 2047 that the Volkstaat harbouring HNP militants within its borders and call for a swift invasion, despite the clear animosity between the AV and the HNP, which had become clear even before the Ceasefire of 2038 and that had resulted in atttacks even against the People's State by the terrorists. This was condemned even by members of his own party as a reckless decision and has been viewed internationally as an attempt to achieve a personal victory to boost the popularity of the EFF. General Dumo Londisizwe ordered his men instead to march on Cape Town, prompting Malema and his ministers to flee to Pretoria. Having arrived in Cape Town, Londisizwe declared an independent "Cape Republic" to be administered by the military prior to the restoration of democracy, which officially came about in 2049, only to involve what was, in essence, one-party rule by the Democratic Alliance, which had devolved into a paleoconservative ultracapitalist grouping staffed by military officers and in full support of military rule and rejoining the now crumbling western bloc. In 2048, HRH Prince Lethukuthula Zulu followed Cape's example and declared KwaZulu-Natal the independent Kingdom of Zululand and appinted what remained of the banned IFP's leadership as his ministers.